Sunday, 27 April 2014

My last two posts have been "egg white only", so I thought I should even the odds a bit and post a "yolk only" recipe. To be honest, I actually made these cookies on the same day as the Creme Egg mousse, so as not to waste the yolk! These cookies are soft, sweet and chewy - which provides a nice contract to the crunchy shells of the smarties. Needless to say, they are SUPER tasty.

The cookie recipe is based loosely on this one here. (I used it to figure out quantities of butter and sugar). I was still in birthday mode when I made these, hence the sprinkles. But let's be honest, who doesn't love sprinkles?

Preheat the oven to 180 and line a baking sheet with grease proof paper.

Beat the margarine and sugar together until creamy, then add the egg yolk and vanilla extract and best until fluffy.

Add the flour, smarties and chocolate chips (and sprinkles!!) to the bowl, and mix together until a soft dough forms.

Roll the dough into 12 balls (around 30g each) and place these onto the prepared baking sheet. Make sure to leave plenty of space between the cookies, as they will spread!

Bake the cookies for 18 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven but leave to cool on the baking tray for another 5 minutes - the cookies will firm up as they cool. Once firm enough to move, transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Taste one, just to make sure they are OK. Then taste another, just in case that first one was a fluke. ;-)

Sunday, 20 April 2014

So, last Sunday I was at the garage with my other half, when I spotted a pack of 6 Creme Eggs on offer for £1.50. When I picked them up, Ali gave me a look which said "seriously, a week before Easter and you're buying MORE chocolate?", so I explained, "I want to make something Eastery for my blog." And we left it at that.

Later that same day, I was browsing some recipe books looking for something for dessert, when I came across a recipe for Mars Bar Mousse in Good Food's 101 Tempting Desserts. That gave me an idea - what if I made Creme Egg mousse, instead!? So, I did, and they turned out pretty tasty. The end result is a light, fluffy mousse, sitting on top of a layer of chocolate sauce. And guess what? IT ACTUALLY TASTES OF CREME EGG!

Okay, so you start with the tricky part. Chop your creme eggs into smallish chunks, without losing too much creme. Pop this in a small saucepan with the milk and cocoa powder.

Put the pan on a low heat and stir continuously with a whisk until the chocolate has melted. Add the cornflour and continue to whisk for a further 3 minutes. You want the mixture to get hot so that it thickens, but you don't want to let it boil or you may spoil the chocolate. Remove from the heat and set to one side.

Put your egg white into a glass bowl, and rest this over a pan of gently simmering water. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks, being very careful not to get any water into the bowl. Once the egg whites have reached stiff peaks remove from the bain marie.

Carefully fold the chocolate sauce into the egg whites, until fully combined. Pour this into two serving dishes, and pop in the fridge for at least two hours to set.

Get a spoon, tuck in, and enjoy the chocolate overload. After all, it is Easter!

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

You know, I never understood the tradition of taking sweet treats into school or work on your birthday. I know it's the done thing, but why? Surely people should be bringing you cake on your birthday, rather than the other way around!?

Anyway, today is my birthday, so I decided to conform and bake something to take into work. However, my plan for the evening is to go to a restaurant with a bunch of my friends and have pudding. Not dinner, just pudding. I'm hoping we can just order a couple of everything, and a bunch of spoons, and then when it all arrives we just tuck in. That's the plan.

When it came to making something to take into work, I thought I should try and make something light and easy going, bearing in mind my plans for the evening. The result of that thinking was a tasty little tray bake, packed full of smarties, chocolate chips and sprinkles, topped with a light meringue frosting and more sprinkles (it is my birthday, after all...)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 and line a square baking pan with greaseproof paper

Add the margarine, yogurt, sugar, sweetener, egg, milk and vanilla extract to a large mixing bowl, and whisk until smooth.

Tip the flour, baking powder, smarties, sprinkles and chocolate chips on top of the cake mixture, and fold in until combined. (Adding the "extras" with the flour like this gives them a nice coating of flour which helps to stop them from sinking to the bottom... :-) )

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 20 minutes, until the top is lightly golden and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for a couple of minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Move on to the frosting. Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks and put to one side. Pop the sugar and water into a heavy based pan over a low heat. Stir until the sugar has melted, then bring the syrup to the boil for a minute or so - be careful not to let this turn to caramel, though! Remove the syrup from the heat, and, whilst whisking, pour it into the egg whites. Once your sugar syrup is well incorporated, add the vanilla extract, food colouring and icing sugar to the mixture and continue to whisk until these have dissolved and you are left with a fluffy, glossy frosting.

Spread the frosting over the tray-bake and top with the remaining sprinkles. Cut into 15 slices, and serve.

Sunday, 23 March 2014

This month's theme for Cake'n'Bake was "Mad March", and I wanted to bake something a little on the unusual side. When I saw a photo of "goat's cheese brownies" on buzzfeed, I knew that had to be it. The only problem was that it ended up turning out that goat's cheese brownies were not that mad at all... when I searched for recipes 100's came up! Apparently goat's cheese brownies are pretty big in the USA! So, how could I make my brownies even madder? By adding beetroot. Yummy, lovely beetroot.

This is a brownie of three layers. I used my usual brownie recipe for the chocolate layer, and took inspiration for the goat's cheese layer and the beetroot layer here and here (respectively). I started mine with the chocolate layer, then goat's cheese, and then beetroot. Next time I make them, I'll do the beetroot layer first, as that batter is much thicker than the other two and needed spreading with a spoon, whereas the chocolate and cheese layers could just be poured. I've typed the instructions below as if the beetroot layer went in first, because I think you'll find it much easier to do that way! These brownies do take a bit of time and effort, but they are seriously worth it...

I've provided below all of the ingredients you need to make all three layers, so this will work as a sort of shopping list. But, to make it easier to read and to tell what goes where, I've split ingredients by layer in the method below. I hope this makes sense!

Ingredients

175g cooked beetroot

35ml vegetable oil

100g dark chocolate

3 medium eggs

50g caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

100g self raising flour

50g cocoa powder

150g soft goat's cheese

30g honey

55g margarine

110g muscovado sugar

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 40 minutes

Makes: 25 brownies

Preheat the oven to 180 and line a brownie tin with baking paper

Start with the beetroot layer:

For the beetroot layer:

175g cooked beetroot

35ml vegetable oil

100g dark chocolate

1 egg

50g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

45g self raising flour

25g cocoa powder

Put the beetroot and the oil into a blender and blend to a fine paste. Add the chocolate and blend until the chocolate is in very small chunks. Put this mixture to one side.

Pop the egg, sugar and vanilla extract into a mixing bowl and whisk until pale and foamy. Add the beetroot mixture, flour and cocoa powder to the bowl and fold into the eggs until all combined.

Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and spread level with the back of a spoon. Pop the brownie tin to one side whilst you prepare the cheese layer:

For the cheese layer:

150g soft goat's cheese

1 egg

30g honey

20g self raising flour

Put all of the ingredients into a bowl and whisk until smooth. Carefully pour the mixture over the beetroot layer and put to one side.

Prepare your chocolate layer:

For the chocolate layer:

55g margarine

25g cocoa powder

1 egg

110g muscovado sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

35g self raising flour

Melt the margarine, either in the microwave or in a pan over a low heat. Stir in the cocoa powder, and put this to one side to cool for a few minutes.

Put the egg, sugar and vanilla extract into a mixing bowl and whisk until pale and foamy. You'd be surprised - even brown sugar goes pale when whisked!

Fold in the cocoa mixture and the flour until this combines to a smooth, runny batter.

Pour the batter very carefully over the goats cheese layer in the brownie tin, making sure to cover all of the goats cheese mixture.

Pop the brownies into the over for 40 minutes. The brownies should feel "set" when you press them likely - that's how you know they will be cooked but still fudgey.

Allow the brownies to cool in the tin before turning out onto a chopping board and cutting into 25 squares.

Eat one, and be amazed at the marvellous combination of taste and texture!

Sunday, 16 March 2014

The sun is shining, and my garden is filled with daffodils, so I wanted to make something light and delicious to celebrate the start of Spring: a lemon and raspberry tea loaf. The cake is light and fluffy with a subtle lemon flavour, topped with juicy, zingy raspberries. Perfect for a sunny afternoon tea!

Based on this recipe I found on Pinterest. I love Pinterest far too much. It has ALL the things.

Pop all of the ingredients except the raspberries into a large mixing bowl and whisk until they come together to form a smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and pop into the oven, make sure to set a timer for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, quickly open the oven door and sprinkle the raspberries of the top of the loaf. This should mean that they don't sink too far into the cake, but instead rest nicely on the top where they will go soft and leave lots of yummy juices.

Bake for a further 45 minutes, until golden brown on top (between the raspberries) and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin. Once cooled, cut into slices and serve with a cup of tea! (You could also serve with a dollop of clotted cream, if you're after a really indulgent spring-time treat!)

Sunday, 9 March 2014

I decided last weekend that I'd start posting recipes on a Sunday instead. No real reason, other than I felt like it. Sundays were made for baking, right? I'm still playing catch-up with typing recipes from my Cake'n'Bake meetings, so thought I'd continue in a completely non-chronoligical way with these cheese scones from our Fairytale Tea Party in July 2013. I had used the "Sword in the Scone" pun previously when I was doing the Disney Movie Challenge, but it went down well so I figured it would be a good way to get some savoury bakes into our fairytale offering. I accidentally made these vegan, since I try to avoid dairy and used sunflower spread, soy milk and soy cheese. I don't particularly like the taste of soy cheese normally, but it tasted fine in these scones. The scones can be served warm or allowed to cool before serving, and are best eaten on the day of baking.

Heat the oven to gas mark 7 and place the baking tray you plan to use into the oven to heat up.

Heat the milk in the microwave for around 30 seconds until warm, but not hot. Add the lemon juice to the milk and set this to one side for a few minutes whilst you prepare the dry ingredients.

Tip the flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl, and then tip in the margarine. Rub the ingredients together with your fingers until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and grated cheese to the crumb-like mixture, and mix in with your hands.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the cooled milk. Mix these together using a cutlery knife until they combine to make a wet dough, being careful not to overwork.

Scatter flour over the work surface and tip the dough out onto it. Sprinkle a little more flour on top of the dough. Fold the dough over itself 2-3 times until it becomes smooth, again being careful not to overwork. Pat the dough out (it's better to pat than to use a rolling pin) to around 3cm thick.

Using a cutter of your choice, cut scones out of the dough. Tip - do not twist your cutter as this seals the sides of the dough and may prevent your scones from rising.

Brush the scones with a little milk, and then sprinkle on some salt and black pepper before popping them in the oven for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown.

Friday, 28 February 2014

I know I usually post Cake'n'Bake recipes on a Wednesday, but since I struggled to post anything at all towards the later part of last year, I think I'm going to start posting these on a Friday instead. I have a lot of Cake'n'Bake recipes to type up and catch up on too... I was just seriously bad at blogging in 2013!

For Cake'n'Bake Club's January 2014 meeting, our theme was "free-from", so I knocked up these vegan and gluten free cookies. Originally I had used gluten free flour, but they didn't hold together too well so I remade them last weekend using oats and they were much better! The recipe below started it's life over on this blog here, but with a few tweaks from me ;-)

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 8-10 minutes
Makes 18 cookies

Ingredients:
150g rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder

250g crunchy peanut butter

150g dark muscovado sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp water

Preheat your oven to 180 and line a couple of baking sheets with grease proof paper

Pop 100g of the oats into a blender, and whizz to a fine powder. Don't worry if there are a couple of rough bits. Stir in the remaining oats and the baking powder and put to one side.

Beat together the peanut butter, sugar, vanilla extract and water until well combined. Stir in the oats until a crumbly dough starts to form, then knead this gently with your hands until the mixture comes together.

Roll the dough into balls and pop on the baking sheets, leaving a little space in between. Press down with a fork to make a criss cross pattern on top.

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown and starting to get crisp on top. Don't worry if they are still gooey when you take them out of the oven, they will firm up as they cool. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking tray for a minute or two before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Friday, 21 February 2014

Last Friday at work we had a charity bake sale in aid of Hand in Hand for Syria and the British Red Cross Typhoon Haiyan Appeal. I sit on the charity committee and am starting to get a bit of a name for myself with my baking. I just missed our on the Star Baker award at our Christmas do last year, but have got it in my sights this year. At any rate, it had been requested that there are more vegan and gluten free offerings made at bake sales, so I did my best to comply.

All credit for this recipe goes to my friend Joy, who bought these "sausage" rolls to Cake'n'Bake a few months back. They are super simple, and I wouldn't have guessed that the ingredients were vegan friendly, but they are! I'm not sure if all brands would be equally vegan friendly, so just check the labels to be sure.

Pre-heat the oven to 160, and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper

Tip the stuffing mix into a bowl and stir in boiling water. Check the packet of stuffing mix to get the quantity of water, as I believe this varies brand to brand. I used around 350mls. Pop the stuffing to one side to cool.

Unroll the packet of pastry and cut into 24 evenly sized rectangles.

When the stuffing is cool enough to handle, roll into 24 balls. Pop each ball onto the centre of each rectangle of pastry, and warp the pastry around the stuffing, making sure to tuck in the edges of the pastry as you go.

Brush the sausage rolls with a little soy milk to glaze, the pop in the oven for 18-20 minutes, until golden brown.

Thursday, 20 February 2014

I'm on holiday this week - and enjoying it very much! As such, I've found myself with a bit of spare time to do a bit of tidying up around here. I'll be taking a few pages down and then re-adding them later in a slightly different format, so please accept my apologies for any disruption! Hopefully a new and improved blog will be coming your way soon :-)

Friday, 14 February 2014

Every year I try to make/bake an edible valentine that I'm able to post out to girlfirends. This year I also gave some to some boys - my housemate and my boyfriend. So, I give out a lot of valentines... everyone deserves a little love, right? I had a couple of packets of Love Hearts and knew I wanted to make something with those, and a colleague had recently told me about making fudge with marshmallows. So I did a bit of research, and decided to give it a go. My fudge is based on the recipes here and here, but in the end I left both my phone and my laptop in my bedroom so just ended up winging it. I think it worked!!

Place your margarine, sugar and evaporated milk into a large saucepan and stir over a low heat until the margarine has melted and the sugar dissolved. Stop stirring and allow the mixture to come to the boil for 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat and add half of the marshmallows to the pan. Fold these into the hot mixture until they have completely melted, then repeat with the remaining marshmallows. Stir in the chocolate until this has melted and the ingredients come together as a smooth, yummy, gloopy mixture. Pour this into the lined brownie tin.

Sprinkle on your sprinkles (ha!) then place the love heart sweets message up into the mixture. It doesn't take long for a film to develop on the top of the fudge, so work quickly and just press your sweets onto the fudge lightly so that they stick, but don't sink. Pop your fudge into the fridge for at least 3 hours, but preferably overnight.

Using the clingfilm to help you, lift the fudge from the tin and place onto a chopping board. Use a long knife to slice the fudge into squares, using the love heart sweets as a guide. Pro tip when it comes to fudge slicing (seriously, I was taught to slice fudge by the guys at Cambridge Fudge Kitchen) - place your knife against the fudge where you'd like to slice, and press down in a smooth movement. Then, gently slide the knife out of the fudge towards your body. Hey presto, smooth sided fudge!

Taste one before sharing with you friends and loved ones. This is a very important step - you need to show yourself some love, too!

Friday, 7 February 2014

So, he didn't want a big fuss made but today is my boyfriend's 30th birthday, and I think that deserves a fuss, so I'm dedicating today's blog post to him and his birthday cake. Ali absolutely loves sticky toffee pudding, but also loves cakes with lashings of buttercream, so for his birthday cake I decided to try and mix the two. This is what I came up with (a layer for each decade!!)

I got the recipe for the sponge cake from good old BBC Good Food, but switched in some dark muscovado sugar for a rich sticky toffee taste. The buttercream is just my standard recipe with caramel flavouring instead of vanilla!

Pop the margarine, golden syrup and salt into a saucepan and melt over a low heat, stirring occasionally. Put to one side to cool.

Sift the flour and the sugar into a large bowl. I know it seems weird to sift sugar, but I find that when using muscovado sugar this is the only way to ensure that you can all the lumps out!

Tip the milk, eggs and vanilla into a jug and whisk until combined.

Stir the cooled butter and syrup mixture into the flour, then stir in the milk and egg mixture until it all comes together to make a smooth, runny batter.

Share the batter evenly between the three cake tins and bake for 25-30 minutes until springy to touch. remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cake have cooled, make your buttercream. If you're using a stand mixer, just pop all of the ingredients into you mixer, turn it on and come back in a few minutes. If, like me, you prefer to mix up your buttercream by hand, you might find it easier to add the icing sugar to the butter around 150g at a time. Beat in the flavouring, and the milk if needed to make the icing a spreadable consistency.

Place one of the cakes onto your serving plate, and leave the other two on the cooling rack. Divide the buttercream evenly between the three cakes and spread the the edges before carefully stacking the cakes. Sprinkle crushed up diam bar onto the top tier, and Robert's your father's brother!

Make sure to inhale a lot of the yummy toffee whiff that this cake gives off before eating. Seriously, it smells good!!

Friday, 31 January 2014

These brownies are lovely, rich and chocolatey, and with a few cheeky ingredients swaps, not as bad for you as you might think!!

It seems to have become a recent habit of mine to find a recipe, decide to try it, and then change it around a bit in the process of making it. This particular recipe started it's life as a 37-calorie brownie recipe, which Joy posted to the Cake'n'Bake club Facebook wall. My version is about 64 calories, as I used sugar instead of sweetener, and added some chocolate chips. They went down well in my office! (Note - the calorie content will change depending on the brands you use... I make no promises!) I'd also recommend using milk chocolate chips, as I found these injected a bit of sweetness into the rich chocolate brownie which just MADE them.

Friday, 24 January 2014

Well folks, today is Friday, which means tomorrow is Saturday, so I decided to share my current favourite Saturday breakfast recipe with you. Easy-peasy yet scrumdiddlyumptious banana pancakes. And they only have 3 ingredients...

This recipe started life a a 2 ingredient pancake recipe, but I just wasn't brave enough to try eating eggy mashed banana, so I tweaked it a little. Pretty sure the fitness fanatics aren't going to go ape for this one, but it's certainly good enough for me!

Ingredients:
1 large banana, or two small ones
1 medium egg
20g self raising flour
A little oil, butter, or frylite for greasing

Break your banana into a bowl and then mash it up with a fork - try to get rid of all the big lumps.

Add the egg to the mashed banana and whisk with the fork until combined.

Tip in your flour and fold in until just mixed.

Heat a little oil/butter/frylite in a pan. When hot, spoon 2tbsp of the pancake batter into the pan and spread into a circle shape with the back on your spoon. Let the pancake cook side for 30-45 seconds, until the edges are cooked and bubble start to form in the centre, then flip the pancake over and cook the other side for 30-45 seconds.

Repeat until you've used all the batter, then enjoy your yummy, fairly healthy banana breakfast pancakes!

Monday, 13 January 2014

Well, that all went a bit wrong, didn't it. Honestly, I had every intention of blogging recipes regularly again in December... I really did. But then life happened, and the recipes did not find their way onto the blog.

I had talked to my friends about this, and potentially "retiring" this blog, but Craig said something which made a lot of sense, so that's what I'm going with. What did he say, you ask? It's my hobby, so I should just do it when I feel like it, rather than feel I have to post every week. Sensible, huh?

At any rate... I am going to try my utmost best to keep this blog alive, because I really do love The Princess and the Cake, but I may not always be able to post weekly. I think that's OK. So, watch this space, and you may well see something you like.

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About Me

I am a real life Disney Princess; Disney taught me almost everything I need to know in life. My friends and family taught me everything else.
I put my heart and soul into everything I do, except cleaning. At times I could be called bossy, but I prefer passionate. I am the "organiser" in the majority of situations. I spend way too much time on the internet in general, and on Facebook in particular.
I like to bake cakes and then eat them.

Sources

I always try to provide sources if I'm using someone else's recipe or taking inspiration from them, so if there isn't a source listed then the recipe belongs to me. All images of the bakes belong to me too. Everything to do with Disney and/or Pixar films, titles, characters and images of the films, titles and characters belongs to the Walt Disney Company. I love you - please don't sue me.